Against lefties, Red Sox still can’t get it right

Sunday

Jun 2, 2013 at 7:09 PM

Mike Napoli knows he’s having a backward season. Through the first two months of the season, the right-handed-hitting Napoli — normally a hitter who crushes left-handed pitching — has done almost all of his damage against righties.

Brian MacPherson Journal Sports Writer brianmacp

NEW YORK — Mike Napoli knows he’s having a backward season.

Through the first two months of the season, the right-handed-hitting Napoli — normally a hitter who crushes left-handed pitching — has done almost all of his damage against righties. His slugging percentage against righties is almost 170 points higher than it is against lefties. Eight of his nine home runs — including his game-changing grand slam on Saturday night at Yankee Stadium — have come off righties.

“Usually I hit lefties pretty good,” Napoli said. “It’s just one of those things. I don’t know. … In years past, I always felt really comfortable no matter what a lefty was throwing me. That’s just how it would look. Maybe they’re making adjustments to me and seeing different things and doing different things. I really can’t put my finger on it.”

Napoli is far from alone among Red Sox hitters. A lineup built with left-right balance has had a decidedly one-way tilt. One of the most prolific offensive teams in the American League still routinely finds itself shut down when a left-handed pitcher is on the mound.

In fact, this Boston team is hitting lefties at its worst rate since 1992. Not since then have Red Sox hitters posted a worse OPS against left-handed pitching than the .694 they’ve posted against lefties this season. Before last year’s disaster, their team OPS against lefties had been over .800 for five straight years — and even last year’s team OPS against lefties was a modest .759.

The latest example came Friday night when CC Sabathia struck out 10 and didn’t yield a run until the seventh inning. Of the seven occasions in May when the Red Sox scored two runs or fewer, six came when a lefty starter was on the mound.

Several of the best Red Sox hitters are left-handed and thus susceptible to the Sabathias or Cliff Lees of the world. Lefties Stephen Drew, David Ortiz and Jacoby Ellsbury were always going to play every day and would be expected to be more productive against righties than lefties.

That’s the way it’s worked out. Ellsbury has an OPS under .600 against lefties. Drew has been even worse. Even Ortiz has just a .303 on-base percentage against lefties this season, well off last year’s pace.

But a batting order featuring Will Middlebrooks, Napoli and Dustin Pedroia — plus Jonny Gomes, seemingly signed specifically for that purpose — seemed poised to bludgeon left-handed pitching. Such a lineup looked like a significant asset in a division that features Sabathia, David Price, Mark Buehrle and Wei-Yin Chen.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Middlebrooks has a sub-.300 on-base percentage against lefties. David Ross has an on-base percentage against lefties that’s even worse. Gomes has a .324 on-base percentage but has just two extra-base hits against lefties all season.

Pedroia — naturally — and Jose Iglesias have been the only Boston hitters to thrive against left-handed pitching. That Iglesias is hitting .300 with a .353 on-base percentage against righties is impressive enough, but he’s hitting a mind-boggling .619 against lefties.

What makes matters worse — for everyone other than Iglesias — is that the Red Sox faced an inordinate number of lefties in May. A lineup built to pummel lefties could have feasted on such a steady diet of southpaws. Instead, it did no better than tread water.

The average American League team this season has seen a lefty pitcher in 29.7 percent of its plate appearances. Lefties have pitched 28.8 percent of innings in American League games this season. Over the last 10 years, lefties have faced anywhere from 27-32 percent of Red Sox hitters. The lefty-righty ratio has been relatively consistent over time.

In the month of May — a month capped by 71/3 innings of dominance by Sabathia on Friday night — the Red Sox saw lefties pitch 42.8 percent of the innings against them, almost 50 percent more than what they ordinarily should expect.

Such a disparity only made Boston hitters’ struggles against lefties more glaring.

Could it be a problem going forward? It’s hard to say.

It seems impossible that Boston could keep facing lefties at such an inordinate rate. There just aren’t enough lefties around for the Red Sox to keep facing lefties in more than 40 percent of their plate appearances.

But the more vulnerable the Red Sox are against lefties, the more opposing teams are going to line up their pitchers accordingly. Texas will throw Derek Holland at the Red Sox on Wednesday and can deploy lefty reliever Robbie Ross to snuff out rallies with Drew, Ellsbury or Ortiz at the plate. Los Angeles will start C.J. Wilson in one game and could use Scott Downs in two of the others.

If everything went according to plan, sandwiching Ortiz and Drew around a lefty masher like Napoli would give teams pause when trying to use the same lefty to get both out. It just hasn’t worked out that way so far. The lefty mashers haven’t been productive enough to make anyone pay.

The good news is that hitters like Gomes and Napoli have a lengthy track record of hitting lefties. It’s more likely that the last two months have been a blip than evidence of a new trend. The blip just came at a bad time on the schedule — a time when the Red Sox were facing far more lefties than they ever could have expected.